Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Fall is here and the gardens are taking a lot of my time right now getting them ready for winter. I always hate this time of the year having to cut back all my beautiful flowers.

The Chrysanthemum in containers. This is a pink and white. The white is very delicate looking on this one.

More of the pink and white. This sported off my pink and it will be interesting to see if it does the same next year.

The solid pink Mum with a small Hosta in the center. Now my intentions are to leave these containers where they sit. This is on the North side of my patio so light shade most of the day and direct sun for a couple hours, but wide open completely to those NW winds which can be the hardest part about winter. I intend to find something that I don't have to move containers with. Looking ahead to that old age and not being able to. We'll see if these can come back next Spring and if they end up being what I can keep in there year long.

A little closer up of the Blue Mist shrub. Color keeps getting deeper on these as the weeks go by. I will hard prune these again in the Spring to about 6 inches to get them to fill out even fuller.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

We've received some much needed rain. Not of much help when we needed it but did help before going back into the high 80's. I have started cutting back so the yard is already starting to look a little bare. Cut back all the Daylilies except Stella which insists on blooming again and a few other things. Still lots of work left, but it is showing a lot of empty space right now.

Acer Griseum, my Paperbark Maple. I love this tree. The bark exfoliates, which is where the bark peels and hangs there. Very cool looking. I really didn't intend to plant another tree out back but my family garden of Hosta will appreciate it. The Paperbark Maple only get about 25 feet high so it won't provide a lot of shade but I love the tree and wanted it. Being a smaller tree means it's slow growing also. I finally found one at a local nursery, as they can be hard to locate. I did not want to order one online since the branching is so important on these and figured I would get an ugly one.

Being a 20 gallon tree, I had to have it dug out and planted for me. My brother Craig on right came over to do the work with the help of Dave that works for him in home improvement. For you not following my brother go on by and visit at "Ohio Outdoors" blog if you have time. He doesn't have time to blog much but he'll follow back.

The May Night Salvia is blooming and giving some much needed color around here. Obviously this will need to be divided next year since it sprawled out too much.

And here is Salvia Sensation Rose also blooming. A couple others are also but those being put in this year the current blooms are very close to the ground and I just didn't feel like laying on the ground to try and get photos.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The first full week of September 2011. After a summer like no other that I remember. I know that we've had it easy compared to some of the Southern states. I guess I should count myself lucky that anything is blooming.

The Blue Mist shrub, which is in the Spirea family. I love the blooms on this but it just doesn't put out the blooms early enough for me. Had more in the yard and took some out. I left two in as of right now but can't say I won't change that next year if I find something else more interesting with a little earlier bloom that lasts through the fall. That's my Sambucus Black Lace in the background. I do like having shrubs filling up the yard since it sure helps reduce cleanup in the fall.

One of the Red Double Knockout Roses. Both of them survived the transplanting I did right before the heatwave. These truly are tough Roses.

Sedum Matrona. Someone on an earlier post asked to see this again as the season progressed so here are the current flower heads.

Sedum Autumn Joy. I love the flower heads of Sedum. These are just pinking up but I find them pretty before they even do and love that Sedum's grow and do great regardless of the weather. The interesting thing I notice this year was that we haven't had the usual amount of bees.

I thought both my Clematis were toast. As you can see the color is about right for toast. :) We've gotten rain for 2 days and this one has new green growth on each stem here. The other it's poor little stem burned so bad that it's on the ground and pretty much non existent now. Don't remember which one this is and wasn't worried about the name since all you see is a couple of green leaves, so my hopes are that atleast this one will come back next year. I believe that the other one is the one I wanted most. I've heard others say that theirs burned like this with only brown leaves and the stems looked dead and it came back the following year. I'm hoping for the best and that next year will be a great gardening year.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

September 2011 and gardening has been an experience this summer. We did finally luck out and get a drenching rain last week but immediately went back in to dry mode here and in the 90's again with 97 by Friday. They are predicting mid 70's next week, just in time for me to get my new tree planted.

A lot of people have commented about the Chrysanthemums from previous posts. First I do not pinch them back ever. I let them grow as big as they want. I've been very fortunate on the pink which I have had many years and always have the first bloom by July 1st, the others the beginning of August. My Yorkshire Terrier Pagan stopping to sniff the blooms. Why she would want to sniff a Mum is beyond me, but that's a dog for you. The Mums will have to be divided next Spring. They have gotten way too wide for the space I have allotted them in my Family Garden.

I have a few other colors that I transplanted in May right before the heatwave hit, so they are alive but not blooming yet. I believe they are in decent shape otherwise and should overwinter and bloom fine next year. I've found that you can not cut them down to the base in the fall like so many of my other perennials. When I do cut back I leave atleast 4 inches of stalks to protect them although some people leave them and do the cutting back in early spring. I also find that dividing should be done in the spring by April for the best shot of survival.

In just a few weeks you can already see the Hydrangea Vanilla Strawberry pinking up on this bloom and you can see two more blooms coming in on the left. I just have a really good feeling this is going to be a big bloomer for me when it grows up and fills in. You can see a Hydrangea Limelight behind it in this photo.

The Hydrangea Limelights are really looking beautiful in full bloom. This one is located elsewhere in the yard.

My new shrub I got last week. This is a Cotinus Coggygria Ancot common name Golden Spirit Smoketree. I love the looks of this shrub. When mature and filled in it will be mostly a golden color and some day the plumes a pinkish shade. It was hard even locating one of these and I was ready to order online when a local nursery found one and I lucked out with 30% off which was nice since it's not a cheap one to buy. I vacillated on where to put it. I wanted it in two different spots with it's golden color but really only wanted one shrub. I would have loved it in the corner of my yard where my Viburnum is since I have a Norway Weeping Spruce in front of the Viburnum and the golden shrub would have made my spruce stand out, but I went to dig up that Viburnum and hit the driest dirt possible. Well decided that I wasn't digging up something that does that well in that location and decided to put this in the other spot that really was choice for me to look at. I removed two Hydrangea Quickfire to plant this in it's new location. Relocated one Quickfire elsewhere in the yard and sent the other to my brothers.

This backline has been pretty bare this year. I dug up and moved all my Lavender because they weren't located right between all the shrubs and centered them better. Should have done this when I decided to do flowering shrubs as the backbone a couple years ago but didn't. I did lose most of the Lavender when the heatwave hit right after transplanting. I did save a few and decided to add a few other things down the backline instead of all Lavender. Those should all be coming in decently next Spring and that area looking better for me hopefully.